Chapter 1-The Site
Walter Bailey had just finished. hanging the 14th floor trusses for the huge window panels that would wall the new building. He'd had a headache all day and was glad for this one to be at last over. In 40 years of working he'd never really become accustomed to the disaster area, that was a construction site. The smells, churning and commotion, agitated him, the long dark drive to work depressed him, the cacophony of racket that erupted pounded his eardrums until his head split and they all had one or more ass holes, who would work their own mother to death. Walter couldn't help noticing that most of the guys he worked around for 40 years had never been to his house.
In 40 years of working, he'd come to realize that one site was pretty much like all sites, but in less than four weeks he knew that this one was by far worse in every way than any he'd ever seen. It was smack in the Coral Gables business district. Coral Gables was built on the swamp just west of downtown Miami. The sun there is a furnace whose relentless heat gave in only to the late after noon monsoon, which gave way in turn to the sun turning what had been unbearable into a steamy sauna that was unbreathable.
And in the swamp which became a business district parking was a royal bitch. Every day about two pm, he'd have to drop whatever he was doing run down the however many flights of stairs he was up to sink money into the well, just so the meter sluts couldn't write him up. The round trip more often than not involved a near death experience with a Dade County fire engine, hook and ladder as they rumbled through the downtown canyons. The blasting air horns nearly lifted him off his feet on his first day on the job and he's been a target of one or more since. By the time it was done it was a good day, just to not have a hell of a bad headache.
After 40 years of work, Walter felt as though he had been worn down to a nub. He knew that this would wear him down more, but privately he began to wonder if it would kill him too. He was thinking metaphorically of course, not literally the way it had killed, the concrete finisher.
He heard about that just before he came on the site. They were pouring the concrete for the 11th floor when it happened. Walter was an iron worker, but he had seen many a pour, and on a high rises like this it was a cluster fuck. The cement trucks circled the base of the building like a swarm of ants, pouring their loads into huge vats that the cranes --or storks as they were called--- lifted buckets of the liquid rock to pour on the flying frames set up on the 10th floor.
The frames looked for the most part like a gigantic rectangular kitchen table with about a million metal legs under it. They were called flying frames because they were set up on the highest floor. The new floor was poured on top of them and ounce it set the frames were pulled and placed on top of the new one. On this site there were nine frames to a floor for all 41 floors.
The commotion during the pour was frenzied because all the action had to take place before the concrete dried. The dare devils --other than the iron workers who walked on and fastened the beams--- were the concrete finishers who stood on the frames as the buckets dropped the rock and spread it out and around column forms to speed up the spreading before the concrete dried. One of them was a young Haitian apprentice named Jean Claude Bastile.
He was working on the western edge of the building when "For reasons OSHA could not determine", the legs on the form on which he was working collapsed. The form tipped and thousands of gallons and tons of liquid rock cascaded over the side, down 10 stories and cratered the street, splashed up and flowed back in swirling eddied of tidal concrete. As soon as men who had just scampered for their lives, realized that one of them was missing, they had to search for him in the great concrete cistern, Alhambra street had become. But they didn't find him until the concrete had dried rock-hard . It took hours to chip it away until they could see his body, hands clawing for the surface, silenced in his scream. For the funeral they had to chisel concrete out of his mouth, eye sockets nostrils and ass hole.
Metaphorically, of course.
After that guys started pointing out all the little accidents that they'd never noticed before, but now it added up to something unexplainable, something evil. The Cubans and Haitians were the worst Walter thought. He passed it off as being after the fact, he didn't believe in evil, he was a working man who believed in God, Country and Larry Csonka. But Walter Bailey had no idea how soon he would not just believe in, but know pure evil, not metaphorically, but up close as they say, and personal.
Chapter 2-Jack Napoli:
"Baily get your old sorry ass up" Jack Napoli yelled when lunch break was over. Walter wasn't sure which was weirder, that's he could be so tired after only half a day's work or that some freak like Jack Napoli could be foreman. Napoli was a big bully ex-pro fighter with a barrel chest and arms bigger than a man's torso. He got his kicks out of humiliating and maiming other men. He was dirty and lost as many fights on disqualification as he won.But win lose or draw in the ring Walter Bailey knew all too well how much damage Jack Napoli with his hands. 10 years ago, In a skyscraper job in downtown Miami, Walter was walking down the stairwell when he heard a lot of noise coming from one of the floors. As he stepped out of the stairwell onto the floor in the middle of men screaming and cheering, he watched Jack Napoli beat dog shit out of a huge mean black ex-con who got this job on parole. It took Napoli a week to goad the kid (to Walter every body, except Napoli was a kid) , but when he came out on the 33rd floor where the kid was working and announced," I don't work with no niggers", parole or no the kid was rough and ready.
Yet when Walter walked out on the floor Napoli was just mopping up. A left to the jaw sent the kid's body straight up and a right boot to the groin sent his face smashing to the floor on his knees with his ass sticking up in the air. The raucous routing ceased and you could hear a pin drop on the street 33 floors below. And even as a kid tried to crawl away, but couldn't move Napoli put his huge boot to the kids ass as it protruded there and every muscle the kid had went loose, including his bowels.
They had to scrape the remains of him off the floor and he spent two months in the hospital before going back to prison. Walter was spooked. He had never seen a man beaten that way before. He had the crap beaten out of him, literally not metaphorically. He had never seen another man possess such viciousness and callous indifference. He had never been afraid of a man. But since that day he had no trouble admitting to himself that he was terrified of Jack Napoli.
Jack Napoli never made it big in the ring, but not because he was ever beaten. Instead his career had come to an end when he nearly killed his stablemate and number one heavyweight contender Wily White in Vegas one night. The two were playing poker after a workout and White caught Napoli cheating. He went to do something about it. That was his mistake. A flurry of crashing blows to the head and a stiff knee to the groin had reduced the number one contender to a trash pile of flesh in less than 20 seconds.
After that Jack Napoli couldn't buy a fight.
Chapter 3 -- Walter Bailey
Walter was an Irish Catholic who grew up in Boston's tough south side. Anyone could get beat up, but he had it ingrained in him as a kid that only the lowest scum backs down from a fight. "You don't back down from no body", his father Sean said, to him when he was just eight. "I don't care if it's a 10 foot tall nigger , you don't back down from no body". Walter didn't have anything against 10 foot tall niggers, but he knew he rather fight ten of them than one Jack Napoli, and he knew that his father would be ashamed if he weren't part of the pavement of Lincoln Blvd. in downtown Boston.
Sean was a sky-walker, that meant he worked hundreds of floors high, welding the iron beams and girders together that would comprise the skeleton of the finished building. Walter had done it too, walking, sometimes jumping from beam to beam with death just six inches on either side of your boot. But his father walked the beams in the Boston's sleet and snow, not under the Miami sun.
On a winter morning when hurricane force winds whipped around Boston's downtown corridors Sean and the other skywalkers were testing each others testosterone to see who would go up and work and who would stay, back down, on the ground, on a day when no one should have gone up. Every man in the union hall knew that Sean was by far the strongest sky-walker there, but the strongest walker in Boston would have had to been a bird to be saved on that day. Sean Bailey was far too strong a walker to get blown off the beam, but the beam wasn't strong enough to hold its mooring. The wind whipped through the guts of the new building and the beam that Sean was walking on, had it's welds and pins blown apart, so that it and he were blown from the 117th and the largest piece of Sean Bailey they ever found was the size of a finger nail. It was an impossibility that the wind could rip that beam loose like that, but it happened as sure as Sean Baily met Lincoln Blvd. with about a 117 miles per hour sudden stop.
Soon after his mother moved the family to Miami and Walt learned a life lesson in being a parentified child. The only conscious thought he ever had about it was that he would never ever walk on that pavement, in downtown Boston for as long as he lived. Unconsciously he thought that his father sacrificed him to the altar of machismo. His father didn't care about him.
Walter was tough, but he was also a 54 year old iron worker with a previous heart attack. The doctor told told him not to work anymore and he told the doctor to screw himself, but even in his prime Walter knew he was no match for Jack Napoli , worse he knew he'd back down. It still got to him, that which was inculcated at his fathers knee, he owed it to his father god dammit.
"I don't care if it's a 10 foot tall nigger, you don't back down from no body".
Sean wasn't a pussy, he didn't back down, he got to be a million little permanent pieces of the pavement in downtown Boston. Sean was tough but he never fought Jack Napoli, it was something Walter didn't like to think about.
When he thought about his own kids, he didn't want to think about that either. he loved his kids, but they came from different times and places. Walter believed in working even if he didn't like it. An honest man works he told his kids, even though he was already tired of it by then. The oldest, Dan, never got that straight. He moved out at 19, worked part time jobs, sold dope to make ends meet and didn't have a fucking clue of a plan for the future. For Dan there was no future. He had gone to his dealer friend Eric's condo to pay him $200 he owed. Then he and Eric went strolling down Biscayne Blvd., when the jealous boyfriend of Eric's ex-girlfriend stepped out from the corner of Eric's condo building and sprayed the air nine millimeter shells like he was misting Patagonians. He missed Eric entirely, but Dan had his brains blown all over Eric's condo wall.
In order to cope Walter the tragedies gravitational pull, Walter needed to process, make sense of it, instead he summarized succinctly. To Walter, for the net sum of $200 Dan had his brains sprayed all over that condo wall on Biscayne Boulevard .
His two daughters Karen and Sarah both graduated high school with honors, married nice boys, and moved out of Miami so fast that he might of seriously wondered if Jack Napoli had hits on them. Ungrateful bitches, he still hadn't seen his grandkids.
That left just Mark and Mark was his pride and joy. Mark just adored Walt, he was still 13. 13, tops in the seventh grade class, and Walter couldn't help loving him the most.
He believed in family and work and not necessiarly in that order, but as Walter Bailey was finding out, none of those things mattered, not the way he thought they did anyway.
Chapter 4 -- The Stairwell
"Move your sorry old ass Baily", before you make me make a comeback" Napoli said as he gave Walter his daily rousting. Who the fuck did you kill, or kill for, to get this job, Walter wondered again. Outside of cheating and beating to a pulp a one time confident heavyweight, Napoli was just a big dumb bomber who did know is ass from a hole in the ground. But hits on the side, that was something Walter imagined Napoli would do quite naturally.
He packed up his tools and started into the stairwell, then caught a whiff of something that made him stand bolt upright. "Jesus Christ, I wish those guys wouldn't piss in the stairwells," he thought.
By then Richie Zettle was already on the fifth, where he just finished cutting another fart. As tired as he was Walt was in no mood for Richie today. No one heard it, but they all knew where it came from. Richie was the kind of guy who liked to tell raunchy sex jokes and cut nasty farts, the kind that could burn paint off the walls. Sometimes they lasted 30 seconds and sounded like a loud barf. This one had been of the silent but deadly variety.
Passing the fifth floor, Richie Zettle was laughing and cursing as usual, but somewhere between the fifth and sixth floor, something happened to Richie, something that changed a lot more than just his mood, something that besides Richie, only Walter Bailey would know and he only too well.
When Richie came out on the sixth floor, he hadn't just farted, but shit a full load in his pants. His hair had gone stark white in an icy film covered his skin. He walked and that stiff at the joints way of old Frankenstein movies. He walked that way, spine and limbs locked, walked and work-boots dragging on a concrete floor eyes agape with terror, all the way to the edge. Then he just kept walking, fell 6 floors and broke his back on a pile blocks. Ritchie Zettle became a vegetable and never moved another muscle below his neck after that.
Chapter 5-The Diesel
Walter thought that Richie Zettle was dead and felt bad for him, but not so bad that he didn't take the rest of the day off. OSHA was going to be around asking a lot of questions, and there was nothing the Walter could do for Richie anyway. Walter was parallel parked on Alhambra Street, he stood on the sidewalk as he packed his tools into the back of his truck. Then he walked around the back of his truck, looked down. Alhambra Street towards Ponce de Leon Blvd. and seeing that it was clear stepped around the drivers side of his truck.
It was then that the hook and ladder seem to have materialized right on top of him. First of the engine rumble by turning his insides to jelly. The Horn hit him like a punch in the face as he was pressed against his truck, pinned. The tires shaved the front of his boot, then came the ladder. Its operators spinning its slender vertical steering column madly, clutching at so tightly that Walt or could see the bare bones in his fingers. And that's what's weird. They were bare-bones, his hands and arms too. He was a skeleton wearing a black raincoat, black boots and black fire-men's hat. It stared at Walter through dark eye sockets, turning his head in an eerie slow motion as it passed. That moment seemed like hours to Walter, so, he was sure of what he was seeing. The wake ruffled Walter's clothing and dragged his hair down in his face. Then it lifted his stiffened body off its feet and smashed it into the pavement elbows first. Walter's gaping eyes dropped with his head as his jaw slammed his bottom teeth into the top.
He was looking straight down at the pavement," your dads in there, in the pavement ", the thought said. A fucking horrible thought, he shouldn't have had it, Walter chastised himself. But you're fucking dad's down there and some day you will be too you piece of shit, the thought said. Looking up he could see the fire engine rumbling down Alhambra Street with circling eddies of trash and black smoke swirling behind. Gasping he rolled over and fumbled for the aspirin can in a shirt pocket. He swallowed the precious little heart pill inside and in physical agony forced himself to start the truck on its way down Alhambra Street in the same direction as the fire engine. His arms hurt so bad he could barely steer or shift gears, but somehow managed to bang second. He no sooner thought that he was on his way home when he locked up the brakes, screeching, burning rubber, sliding sideways over his dead dads, up right from out of the street, torso. There was no mistaking it, the sound of his dad's skull crushing against the pavement, and thud against the underside of the truck. Alhambra street was somehow empty in the middle of the day and his dead dad was right in the middle of all four lanes of it.
What to do? RUN stupid, just drive the fuck outta here. Wait you hit some-fucking-thing. What? He knew it couldn't be--THAT, but he knew what he saw Goddammit! What was it, then? Walter warily cracked open the door, and slowly put his foot halfway to the ground, then knowing that he couldn't have hit what he did, he couldn't even have seen what he saw, dismissed it. Denied it. He snapped his head forward, engaged, the clutch and forgetting about his agonizing body entirely made the trip home without blinking.
Chapter 6-The Thoughts:
If Walter thought he was in and get any rest that night he was sorrowfully, wrong.
He had trouble getting to sleep and when he finally did, it was thought he had when he imagined that he'd run over his father that he dozed off to. Fucking horrible thought I shouldn't have had it, I had no right to have it.
Later, Jack Napoli had just finished beating him to a pulp right in front of Mark. He was coming around now and Mark was sobbing over him, "You all right Pop? How come you let him beat you up Pop? You all right? You son of a bitch you let him whip you, you let him win. The incongruity of Mark's sobbing and concern, against his accusing tone rattled Walter more than real punches could. But when Mark went over and listened wide-eyed to Jack Napoli's old flight stories, he woke up thrashing and woke Kathryn up with him.
Neither of them slept again that night. After 20 years of marriage, or was it 30 years, it didn't matter anymore, Kathryn was the only thing beside Mark that didn't make him feel tired. Nothing could make up for the disaster his oldest children had become, but she at least was on his side. Kathryn and Mark were all he had left, the only thing he worked for; but what did he work for? Kathryn would say "you'd keep working if we won the lottery. " We ain't won no fucking lottery," he'd say indifferently to the one who would always stand by him. Walter wouldn't begin to see how much he'd taken her for granted, he'd kill himself. Never mean to her, but she always stood in the shade of his not noticing and after 30 years some marriages don't grow in the dark. And of course she was right. We wondered how much longer could she stand by him, knowing she should have left years ago? He only had 11 years to go,..
" You're going to die on that site", the thought said.
Fucking Stop It Walter said and slapped himself in the face, hard. Why am I thinking these things? These fucking thoughts are out of control he thought. But it would take a lot more than a slap in the face for Walter to shut off the spigot to the cesspool of self talk cluttering his consciousness.
Walter was not the type to think naturally about such things, but Walter was no longer thinking the way he once thought natural. What he couldn't know is that all his thoughts had always been out of his control, but now they were attacking him, like schizophrenic whisperings in an echo chamber, they were out to drive him mad, his own thoughts making him think, am I crazy?
They kept coming around again and again, the thought of his father in the road, the thoughts about Jack Napoli , the thought of feeling old and tired. They tormented him, like swarms of killer bees driving a man over a cliff. Buzzing and thumping against you, stone cold sane without a suicidal bone in your body given enough time you'd gladly sprint for the cliff, like a stark raving lunatic, just the way Richie Zettle did. That's how Walter knew that whatever made Richie jump in 10 seconds, musta seemed like years to him.That's how he knew Richie really fucked it up. Instead of killing himself he became a vegetable,but his minds ears could hear those wicked wispers, the buzzing like a jet engine, yet he unable to tell anyone or move a muscle. Fuck that Walter thought I'll jump from the roof when I do it, and wished he could do something to help Richie.
" You're going to die on that site you fucking pussy", the thought screamed at him, "You wont jump, I'll kill you.
Then Walter came up with another idea and went to get his gun.By the time he put it to his head he was more than ready to blow his own brains against a wall, just like Dan's. Then that thought took control and Walter put his gun down.
Who will kill me Walter wondered. If I am the one thinking these thoughts, then I must have been the one who thought, ' I'll kill you'. If I kill myself, and who said 'I'll kill you"? Actually Walter continued thinking and self could thought the thought, " I'll kill you"? like most people Walter was not accustomed to examining his thoughts. He had difficulty getting in touch with his feelings, and usually didn't think much beyond words and deeds. But now under attack by his own mind, he reacted not with a gunshot or a swan dive from the 41st floor, but by deeply, unknowingly, examining his own thoughts.
In paying attention to the thoughts, he thought of father Diego Sanchez.
Despite his Irish Catholic upbringing Walter and the Catholic Church had split up years ago. He went to church with Kathryn in Miami, but not as a matter of choice. The only thing he remembered was Diego Sanchez seem to pay attention to him. That was at least 10 years ago, and Walter felt old even then so, he couldn't figure out why the young priest took an interest in him. Was he a fucking faggot? If so he was Goddamn desperate faggot.
Sanchez was no faggot, but he acted like he always had something to say to Walter, but then was afraid to say it. Walter wondered now, had Sanchez been trying to warn him. How would he have known back then.
All that Walt ever knew was that Diego Sanchez claimed to be an incarnate of the big J Jesus himself. Further he said that he was fixing what the church had fucked up, for 2000 years. It didn't take long for that kind of talk to get him eventually defrocked by the Church. Even after kicking him out, the Vatican continued a smear campaign for years Kathryn told him.
Vatican smear campaign or not Walter knew would not be long before he would be talking to Diego Sanchez himself.
Chapter 7- Fathers are Like Brothers
Some things can bring a man with nothing in at all uncommon, closer together than brothers. One is being a father. John Smith and Walter Bailey had never known each other before that hot mid August afternoon. Glenn Smith was a 19-year-old interior carpenter working summers with his dad. He had a nearly reconditioned 1964 Mustang convertible, a letter of acceptance to the University of Florida law school at Gainesville, but most important it was Friday, and he had a date with his girl Sarah and the whole weekend to spend with her. So maybe that's why Glenn wasn't watching what he was doing. Maybe it was just a careless that the skill saw he was cutting the drywall with jerked suddenly and cut his left hand off at the wrist landing at Palm up on the floor with a nasty, bloody splat.
But what would explain why he buried the skill saw in his stomach and cut himself up to his throat? Funny, though Sammy Burgess said. It almost looked as if he were fighting the damn thing off. The way he held it away from him with his right arm and how it jerked back and forth its cord whipping around like a tail. then it just went screaming, whining into him. There was only one scream, not from Glenn, but from his dad. Glenn felt no pain, only astonishment and terror, but when his father saw the ugly, butchered pile that had been his son, that's when he screamed.
Walter wasn't there when it happened but he knew exactly how Glenn Smith felt. He'd had this feeling before, first as a kid in Boston when he learned that his dad had died, and how. He's part of the fucking pavement now. Stop it.
Then when he learned that his own kid had gotten his brains splattered against a condo wall on this Biscayne Boulevard, for $200 worth of marijuana. How much was a brain worth Walter wondered now. Brain transplant anyone, got a cheepy , but you will have to scrape it off the wall. Stop thinking these fucking thoughts. But that's when it was, that was the last time Walter felt like this, everything was vague, even solid objects seemed nebulous and
intangible goal of your thoughts and thick fog. Familiar things seemed a little strange, just a little out of level.
The police were investigating him for murder or suicide along with OSHA, but Walter knew that neither would find anything. Walter knew that's accidents happen, it could happen to him or even to mark when he starts working few years. That was another thought he detested.
Walter knew there was nothing that would make Glenn Smith feel better, nothing that would make him feel better.
Chapter 8- Walter and Deigo:
Biscayne Bay reflected the sailboats perfectly in the mornings dead calm. South Bay shore Drive was abroad for lane with center divide. Walter drove the until he turned into McFarland Road where it twisted away from the sailboats, went past Bayfront hotel and up towards Coco Walk where dead ended at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Main Highway.
It was more than simply to roads that intersected there, more than showed on a map.
The streets branched off, lined with expensive exclusive little retail shops, sporting the latest in European fashions. Only a few blocks away, children play in filthy garbage ridden streets. There aren't any day beautiful fashion models rushed to catch a plane on the way to another high-paying photo session, or a mean gang banger to blow your brains out at a stoplight just to get your wallet. There could be no other place in the world like Coconut Grove, it was exclusive to Miami.
After Diego Sanchez was defrocked he moved to a supporters home in Coconut Grove according to the Church. He continued "teaching" until he died in a private plane crash returning from a seminar. Like everything else that's fucked up in life,when Diego Sanchez was alive Walter didn't want to see him and now that talking to him seems like life or death he's dead. Now all Walter had was an address and hope he could learn something from someone there.
Walter pulled the family wagon, up next to the curb. It was the same family wagon that Kathryn had made countless many shopping trips in, taking kids to and from school. Walter drove on the annual August madness called family vacation, and to church on Sundays, when Walter used to take his family to church on Sundays. He missed those days now , weeks and months and years, huge chunks of the best times of his life that he'll never see again. Cursing the releaseseatbelt , that pissed him off that he had to wear it or get a ticket. Then he lifted his aching body up out of the car. Unlike his work truck from which he could step down, the station wagon made him work just to get out of it. But the wind picked up briskly and sweetly as he got out rustling the palm trees and scattering a few leaves, while messing his thinning hair. It stayed that way, and felt good. He didn't bother to drop money into the meter. It was early Sunday morning, the streets were deserted,
He searched up and down the streets until they all became a vast jumbled assortment in his mind. A resting world now of high of prices and high fashion, things he knew nothing about. Across the street, a beautiful girl walked her ridiculous woolly dog with a graceful sexy stride. The wind blown sheer dress billowed out in front, then swirled around, pushing up between her legs in back and wrapped her in it, like a piece of cellophane. Thirty years and a heart attack ago, he would've noticed that. Instead he saw a homeless urchin, covered with newspaper sleeping between the street and the sidewalk under one of the gently rustling palm trees.
The wagon door creak as Walter shut it hard and it closed with a clunk which said that the door no longer lined up with the lock cylinders. The address was the one that the church gave him, the house was a big one story, but not flashy. Spanish barrel tile covered the roof and textured stucco was on the walls. Walter was an construction worker and notice things like that. He liked the stucco. It was solid, something you could depend on in a hurricane, not like the glass that they used instead of walls at the site. He pushed the buzzer and could hear it ring inside. He expected a Hispanic servant to answer, all rich people had servants, and homeowners in Coconut Grove were definitely rich.
Wealthy or not there were no servants at this house. Instead, the diminutive man who opened the heavy wooden door he recognized immediately as Diego Sanchez.
